Service Provides Free Cancer Screenings to Uninsured New York Residents

SUNY Downstate Medical Center and community partners have established the Central Brooklyn Cancer Services Program (CSP) to provide free cancer screenings for uninsured New York State residents living in Brooklyn. Funding for the project is provided by a three-year grant from the New York State Department of Health totaling $1.7 million.

Women above the age of 40 with no health insurance can receive PAP tests and pelvic exams, and clinical breast exams and mammograms. Women and men aged 50 and above with no health insurance can receive a take-home colon cancer test, called a FIT kit.

“Many cancers are treatable and curable when detected early,” said Maria Yomtov, RN, MSN, CDE, director of SUNY Downstate’s Center for Community Health Promotion and Wellness and project director of CSP. “With this new program, a lack of health insurance is no barrier to getting screened.”

In addition to Downstate, participating healthcare providers include Long Island College Hospital, Bedford-Stuyvesant Family Health Center, First Medcare, Inc., Quest, and Doshi Diagnostic Imaging Services.

To schedule a free exam or for more information, people may call 718-270-8846 or 718-270-8245.

**********

SUNY Downstate Medical Center, founded in 1860, was the first medical school in the United States to bring teaching out of the lecture hall and to the patient’s bedside. A center of innovation and excellence in research and clinical service delivery, SUNY Downstate Medical Center comprises a College of Medicine, Colleges of Nursing and Health Related Professions, a School of Graduate Studies, a School of Public Health, University Hospital of Brooklyn, and an Advanced Biotechnology Park and Biotechnology Incubator.
SUNY Downstate ranks eighth nationally in the number of alumni who are on the faculty of American medical schools. More physicians practicing in New York City have graduated from SUNY Downstate than from any other medical school.